


bodies.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25351831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: it comes and it goes.
Relationships: Mr. Numbers/Mr. Wrench (Fargo)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	bodies.

**Author's Note:**

> i love trans numby. the tense is a little fucky but i'm in space right now.

**i. fifteen.**

grady hates his body.

to be fair, he’s a teenager. every teenager hates their body, their face, the world. everything. but grady hates his _more._ he has a better reason than everybody else does, at least. he’s looking at himself naked in the mirror after a shower. _this is stupid,_ he thinks, watching himself get all red in the face with embarrassment and annoyance, _this is so stupid._

he towels off and puts on his pajamas - nearly threadbare hand-me-downs from wes, but the most comfortable thing he owns. not to mention when he wears them he thinks he can catch a phantom whiff of wes, even though they’ve been worn and washed by grady almost ten times now. across the hall is his bedroom, and it’s past eleven. he climbs into bed and stares at the ceiling. he can hear his parents below him in the kitchen talking, and it’s him they’re talking about.

“it’s wesley,” his mom says. “who else? she doesn’t have any friends, lawrence, except him. or, if she does, she doesn’t talk about them. he’s the only one she brings around.”

“we can at least take her to the salon,” his stepfather says. “they can’t put the hair back on, sure, but they can fix what she did.”

“she looks like - like…” and her voice drops, and grady can’t make it out.

“it’s okay, magpie, it’s fine. it’s fine. salon, alright? it’s okay.”

they start talking about something else, finally. grady falls asleep to the sound of them chattering about the weather, his brow knit even in sleep.

  
  


grady wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does is run his hands through his hair. he grins as he touches it, feels how short and bristly it is under his hands. it feels good until it doesn’t, when the rest of his body becomes aware of itself and he feels his tits hanging limply against his chest. his smile fades.

he digs through his chest of drawers, looking for something - he knew it was futile, that he didn’t have anything that would work right, but he could at least look for the hundredth time. he didn’t hear his bedroom door creaking open, he only heard the two sharp knocks on the doorframe.

grady whipped his head around, but it was only his sister rachael standing there.

“hey,” she said.

“hi,” he said. “what do you want.”

she didn’t say anything. she just tossed something at him. it hit him in the face and fell to the floor in front of him. it was a bra, shaped different from the other ones he had. it was sleek, athletic -

“it’s a sports bra,” she said. “it’s mine. was mine. my tits are too big for it now. anyway. it’s supposed to be tight.”

grady picked it up and studied it. it was black. he pulled on it and noticed how taut and sturdy the fabric was.

“and i’m smaller than you,” rachael said, “so it’ll be even tighter.”

  
  


the sports bra wasn’t perfect, but it worked pretty fucking well. better than anything else he owned, at least.  


grady was wearing it under a tee shirt and a flannel, both far too big, and he was pretty flat. when wes saw him grady could tell that he noticed, but he didn’t say anything. for that grady was thankful.

grady waved. wes smiled and waved back at him. _fucking english homework,_ grady said.

_i did it,_ wes said, shrugging. _easy._  


_ suck-up. _

  
  


**ii. twenty-five.**

grady has a cigarette dangling off his lip and dark circles under his eyes. but damn if his hair doesn’t look nice.

he’s got his shirt and suit hanging off the towel rack, pressed and waiting. he’s humming a little bit, some earworm that was on the radio last time they were in the car. he takes a drag off his cigarette and eyeballs himself in the dirty mirror.

_not bad,_ he thinks, touching the skin under the scar on the left of his chest. they’re still pretty red and meaty, but that was to be expected. it’d only been a month and some change, after all.

the nipples still freak him out a bit, how flat and circular and _little_ they are, but they don’t bother him so much when he looks at the whole picture, especially with the chest hair. he taps his own chest, right in the middle, and grins. the cigarette falls into the sink. “oh, shit…” he mumbles.

*****

grady’s suit is rumpled and blood-spattered, no longer prim and pressed. his shoes are all muddy and the ankles of his pant legs are dirty. he’s tired, and his breathing feels a little weak, but his work is done and he’s ready to just collapse on the couch and drink something… 

as soon as they’re in their apartment, grady is undoing his buttons. he kicks his shoes off and hears wes do the same behind him. he sheds his clothes as he goes, leaving a trail like breadcrumbs. he hears wes drop their keys onto their kitchen table.

grady is down to his boxer briefs when he faceplants onto their bed - a mattress on the floor wearing discount-store floral sheets, flanked by a shitty little mismatched lamp on either side. he stretches and revels in how good it feels, spreading his arms and legs out across the bed. he lays there face down until he feels the mattress dip and a gentle hand on his back. he presses into it, and then wes helps roll him onto his back.

_what’s up?_ grady says.

wes shrugs. _wanna do anything?_ he says.

_ like… ? _

_ tv, rent a movie. eat something. you hungry? _

_i’m thirsty,_ grady says, winking and grinning. wes grimaces.

_get drunk by yourself, loser,_ he says.

_don’t be that way,_ grady says. he paws at what he can reach of wes, his side and his hip. _after all the shit we did today? come on. feels like a drink to me._

wes stares at him on the bed, lounging carelessly and nearly nude. grady could tell the moment he relented just by the look on his face. _fine,_ wes said. _let’s fucking drink._

  
  


they get so fucking _blitzed._

they make out, messy and sloppy and slow. in his alcohol-addled mind grady vaguely thinks about taking it farther, but they just make out, surrounded by empty cans on their mattress on the floor.

wes palms grady’s chest, grasping his left pec and biting his cheek. grady, his head fuzzy and warm, giggles.

_my man,_ wes says, eyes all heavy and red, _you’re mine._

grady’s mind is working so slow, but he smiles and kisses wes again, and again, and again. for a moment, they’re young and drunk and life is perfect. grady is wes’s, his boyfriend, his partner, his man, and wes is grady’s.

  
  


**iii. thirty-five.**

_ i don’t want it. _

wrench is offering him half of a cinnamon bun. numbers _does_ want it, desperately - his sweet tooth screams for it - but he’s trying to watch himself. he’s going a little soft in the middle anymore, and it’s had him at his most self-conscious since… probably since he was a teenager and was obligated to wear dresses.

_you do,_ wrench says. he’s eaten his half already. the crumbs are all over the shiny linoleum table they’re seated at. he waves it a little bit, right under numbers's nose. _i know you._

_well, if you know me then you know i need to watch my weight,_ he says. _so just keep it away from me._

_what if i want you to have it?_ wrench says. _don’t you want a treat?_

_no,_ numbers says, even though he does.

_suit yourself,_ wrench says. and he eats the other half. numbers watches.

*****

later, numbers is laying on their bed at the motel, propped up against a few pillows, watching an old episode of the x-files and listening to the sound of the shower through the wall. dinner had been takeout, of course. some local chinese place. numbers’s vigilance with the cinnamon bun meant nothing to the pound of lo mein sitting in his stomach.

“what do you take me for, scully?” mulder says as the shower shuts off. numbers sniffs his own armpit, then. yeah. he could use a shower, too. _and a shave,_ he thinks as he scratches his chin.

wrench walks out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his hips, a cloud of steam following him. he rubs himself down again, rubs himself dry, and tosses the towel aside. he climbs into bed beside numbers, naked, skin rubbed red. numbers immediately shifts to tuck himself against wrench.

wrench wraps an arm around his shoulders, and they breeze through another hour of the x-files before wrench tugs the waistbands of numbers’s pants and boxer briefs down under his pathetic little paunch.

_don’t,_ numbers says.

wrench pats his belly a little, then numbers feels his finger tracing his hysterectomy scars. numbers’s leg twitches. _that tickles,_ he says.

_you know it doesn’t matter,_ wrench says. _if you put on weight._

numbers looks at him. his heart felt like it was flowering. _are you calling me fat?_ he says.

_no,_ wrench says. _i’m saying that it’s fine if you gain some weight. we’re not kids anymore._

numbers glances down at his little belly, then he looks over at wrench’s own body. thicker than when they were kids, but in the right way. he wasn’t as built as when they were younger, but he was still so strong and fit… not for the first time in his life, numbers felt jealous. it was a different jealous - no less frustrating, but different from how it used to be.

_i like it,_ wrench says.

numbers wrinkles his nose. _be serious,_ he says.

_i am,_ wrench says. he presses against numbers, and numbers can feel that he’s getting hard. _it’s cute._

_yeah?_ numbers says, his breathing getting heavy.

wrench nods. he pats numbers’s belly again, then slides his hand down beneath his waistbands. numbers sighs and lets his head fall back onto wrench’s shoulder. it was a wonder what two fingers and a bite on the neck could still do to him after so many years.

_okay,_ numbers thought later, standing in the shower after their fast little fuck. _you can gain a few more pounds. but if your ass gets any fatter, grady, it’s salad until you’re in the grave._

  
  


**iv. forty-five.**

numbers has a lot of scars.

he watches the dog sniffing the ground in the dying light. wrench is somewhere in the house, making dinner or not, and numbers is sitting on the edge of the porch. the dog lays down in the grass.

numbers counts his scars, absently rubbing the puckered pink band across his neck. _that’s one,_ he thinks.

he counts his top surgery scars as one. there was the appendectomy scar, and the faded hysterectomy scars. the healed-over stab wound from years ago. the tiny scar on his knee from when he was little. the gunshot wound. the gnarled scar on his back. _i’ve lived a lot,_ he thinks.

the dog is rolling on her back in the grass. numbers stretches out his legs, arching his back like a cat and groaning, a tiny little strangled noise in his throat. he catches the faint scent of garlic, and the sound of sizzling. _making dinner, i guess,_ he thinks.

he sits there as the sun slides down the sky, listening to wrench cooking. after a while, there are footsteps behind him, and then a gentle hand touching his shoulder.

_what’re you thinking about?_ wrench says when numbers looks up at him.

_nothing,_ numbers says. _you._

_lying,_ wrench says. _i can tell when you’re thinking about me. you get that dreamy look in your eyes._

_do not,_ numbers says. he stands up, a little wobbly, and glares at wrench.

wrench grabs him around the waist and dips him abruptly, kissing him with the vigor of a teenager. the world spins around him a little once wrench rights him, arms still locked around his waist.

they look at each other. wrench has a few more than his fair share of grays, and he wears his whiskers for days on end anymore. his eyes are heavy, but they still sparkle when he looks at grady.

_you look like you’re in love,_ numbers says.

_maybe i am,_ wrench says.

numbers manages a smile. just for wrench, he’ll smile. he smiles a lot anymore.

they eat dinner, and it’s delicious. numbers has his fill, and then he has seconds. in bed they lay beside each other, the dog at their feet, the three of them safe and warm.


End file.
